A new approach on street repairs

It’s hard to believe that the snowstorm that began one of the worst winters in memory around here, weather-wise, happened less than six months ago.

The city Department of Transportation is only just now catching up to repairing all the damage to city streets done by that miserable weather.

Even harder to believe is that another winter will be upon us in about six months, and if it’s anything like the last two, many of the potholes that plagued Staten Island and other boroughs since last winter will return, augmented by new craters and washboard-like rough road surfaces.

Year after year, it’s a vicious cycle of brutal weather, battered streets and hasty repairs, and a lot of flat tires and bent rims for all the people who have to drive on those broken streets in between.

Fortunately, the DOT seems determined to avoid that scenario as much as possible this year.

The DOT recently announced that it has filled 286,000 cavities in streets citywide, but still has a backlog of 4,000, despite the agency’s unprecedented rate of pothole repairs since the winter.

Normally, the agency shifts from patches to repaving in the summer every year. But apparently, the agency’s ideas about dealing with weather-beaten city streets over the long term is evolving from the much-ballyhooed “pothole blitz” approach in which numbers of patches count for more than the quality or durability of the repairs.

DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan told the City Council’s transportation and finance committees last week that the agency now plans to fully repave 1,000 lane miles throughout the city. That’s up from the 750 lane miles the agency originally planned to resurface. The funding for the additional lane-mile resurfacing comes from a 33-percent boost in DOT’s capital budget, including added money from some Council members.

“We are in unusual times,” Commissioner Sadik-Khan said in her testimony before the City Council. “We’ve never had such harsh back-to-back winters.”

However, she said that as her department focuses more on resurfacing as summer looms, there’s less in the way of resources available for ordinary pothole repairs right now.

That response irked some Council members, who have been deluged by complaints about potholes from their constituents, but we think the DOT is putting the emphasis where it belongs.

So does Mid-Island Republican Councilman James Oddo, who has criticized the DOT for its emphasis on short-term repairs and sheer numbers.

“I have a long-standing refrain, and that is that curb-to-curb resurfacing is the most important way to get drivable streets,” he said. “Pothole blitzes and strip-paving are needed, but then we are on an endless game of catch-up. A street that is curb-to-curb resurfaced can withstand a harsh winter more than streets you just cobble together.”

Exactly. The streets that the DOT thoroughly resurfaces this summer are far less likely to be compromised by winter weather and need repairs next spring.

Democratic Councilwoman Debi Rose said that the number of potholes in her North Shore district makes repaving more cost-effective that patches.

“In light of how many potholes we have, paving is a better deal for us,” she said.

She and the other two members of the Staten Island delegation kicked in a total of $1 million of their own city funds to help the DOT with its street-repair campaign. She said she’d rather be able to use that money for other things, especially in a lean year, but acknowledged, “We will continue to do that because it’s such a huge problem and we need to get on top of it.”

However, she said the past several years have made it clear that the DOT itself must earmark more of its own budget for road surface maintenance repairs. (And perhaps less for bicycle lanes? Just a suggestion.)

She’s right. The city can’t maintain city streets on the cheap and then hope the Council fills in the gaps after a bad winter. The more lane-miles DOT resurfaces this spring and summer, the few emergency repairs it will be forced to do after next winter. In the long run, that far-sighted strategy will save the DOT (and the taxpayers) money, and drivers a lot of costly car repair bills and headaches.